Syrian Minister: We Have the Right to Enter the Golan Anytime

Syria’s Information Minister says his country has a right to launch an operation against Israel from the Golan Heights.

By Elad Benari

First Publish: 5/13/2013, 5:43 AM

Golan Heights

Israel news photo: Flash 90

Syria’s Information Minister, Omran al-Zoubi, warned Israel on Sunday that his country had a right to launch an operation against the Jewish State from the Golan Heights.

Speaking at a public symposium and quoted by the state-run SANA news agency, Al-Zoubi said that Israel committed an aggression against Syria recently by raiding military sites near Damascus. With these acts, he said, Israel violated international commitments.

He added that Israel has allowed terrorists to operate inside the demilitarized zone in the Golan Heights and kidnap the UN observers stationed there.

"Accordingly, Syria has the right at this time and at any other time to deal with the Golan issue in the way the owner has the right to deal with his property, because the Golan is and has always been a Syrian Arab land," said Al-Zoubi, according to SANA.

"Israel must understand that it can't take a promenade in the Syrian sky because the Syrian land and sky are not a promenade for anyone," he added.

He stressed, "The Syrian army and people know very well how to defend Syria," noting that this talk is addressed to "all who think that the circumstances are convenient for them to tamper with the country."

"Everybody should know that we are people who don't forget to respond to an aggression against the aggressors, nor do we forget our martyrs and those who killed them," said al-Zoubi.

Addressing Saturday’s car bomb attacks in Turkey, which killed 41 people and injured 100 others, Al-Zoubi blamed the attack on the Turkish government, led by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The Turkish government, he said, turned the border areas with Syria into "international terrorist concentrations," and turned the Turkish civilians' houses, farms and properties into centers and passages for terrorist groups.

He added that the Turkish government has been facilitating the delivery of weapons, explosive devices, car bombs, money and killers into Syria.

Al-Zoubi held Erdogan and the Turkish government directly responsible, both morally and politically, towards the peoples of Syria and Turkey, the region, and the whole world.

Deputy Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Arinc said following the bombings that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his government were the "usual suspects" behind the car bombs.